A case of new identity for Sherlock Holmes

Elementary, the American version of Sherlock Holmes will shock many. The
sleuth is fresh out of rehab and Watson is a woman, says Jane Mulkerrins.

The odd couple: Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes is paired with the first ever female Watson, played by Lucy Liu, who is a sober companion rather than a romantic foilPhoto: CBS

By Jane Mulkerrins

7:00AM BST 23 Oct 2012

In the cluttered, chaotic lounge of a down-at-heel Brooklyn brownstone, one of the most famous fictional characters of all time is standing, staring at a collection of television sets, naked from the waist up and heavily inked with a collection of colourful tattoos. Fresh out of rehab and relocated to New York City, this is Sherlock Holmes, 2012-style, as played by Jonny Lee Miller in a new US television version.

More dramatic even than a tattooed junkie Holmes, however, is the portrayal, for the first time ever, of Watson as a woman – Dr Joan Watson, played by Lucy Liu. Certainly, no one could accuse the creators of Elementary – which begins on Sky Living [on Tuesday] – of a lack of imagination when it comes to reconfiguring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic turn-of-the-century texts.

Nor a lack of fanfare; on the day I visit the set of the show, in Long Island City, NYC, I pass countless colossal posters plastered across buildings and subway stops; there is even a billboard in a corner spot in Times Square, with the two leading actors’ faces 40 ft high.

“The day that it doesn’t feel very strange and completely ridiculous to see that will be a sad day,” says Miller, 39. “I did have to sit my little boy, Buster, down, and explain to him why, when a bus goes past, it has Daddy’s face on it. That has got to be quite strange for a three year-old.”

Blanket advertising by the network giant CBS, which makes the series, aside, playing a prime-time Holmes was too good a chance to pass up says the British actor, whose breakthrough roles in the mid-Nineties included the films Hackers – where he met his first wife, Angelina Jolie – and Trainspotting, in which he played the slickly charming heroin addict, Sick Boy.

“You don’t get asked to lead a CBS show every day,” he says humbly, perching on a plastic chair in a section of the studio that is currently masquerading as a police precinct. “America has always been more enthusiastic about giving me certain opportunities than the UK,” he shrugs. He has lived in the United States for seven years now, and is married to an American, the actress and model, Michele Hicks, 39.

Miller’s Holmes is no less of a whip-smart, if somewhat smug, crime-solving genius than previous personifications. But whereas in the original Victorian short stories and novels, and the numerous reworkings since, Holmes’s dabbling in opium and cocaine was, at best, recreational, at worst, functioning dependency, this Sherlock has been seriously derailed by his drug habits.

“The last paragraph of Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet is: ‘For me, there still remains the cocaine bottle’; Holmes used liquid cocaine,” says Miller, eyes widening. “You can’t really have him using drugs in such a flamboyant way in a modern-day version without addressing that it is a problem,” he says.

The show’s creator and executive producer, Rob Doherty, a Sherlock aficionado, believes this schism is where his Holmes differs dramatically from previous incarnations.

“In all the books and movies over the years, the impression I got was of someone very collected, very together, always 10 steps ahead,” he says. “And I was really interested in the idea of a Sherlock who broke down, and who was taken by surprise that he could break down, because everything always came so easily for him.”

“When you know from an early age that you can see how everything fits together, there is a certain ease, a certain swagger and arrogance,” he continues. “So to have a crippling setback has got to change your world view for someone like Sherlock.”

Holmes’s breakdown is also the impetus for Watson’s presence; Liu’s Joan is his “sober companion”, a former surgeon employed by Holmes’s wealthy father to keep him straight.

“We have a push-pull relationship, because of the position she is in and because of his addiction. There’s always going to be a struggle,” says Liu, 43, who, with her striking cheekbones and feline features is surely the prettiest personification of Watson to date. And unlike in the original texts, in which Watson – the narrator of all bar four of Conan Doyle’s 60 stories – is a devoted fan of Holmes, Joan has yet to be won over.

“She finds him odd and interesting and obviously a challenge, but she is not a fan yet,” says Liu. Watson’s role as vigilant observer remains valid, however. “She has to always watch him and be alert for anything that might make him spin out. So there is a lot of observation on her part, a lot of witnessing,” says Liu.

Doherty’s decision to portray Watson as a woman is not for romance’s sake – the writers have firmly ruled that out; in fact, he points out, the source material suggests that Holmes had some trouble relating to the fairer sex.

“He is uncomfortable and awkward with women,” agrees Liu. “So if you then have Watson, a woman, around all the time, there is a constant uncomfortableness, and the chemistry that comes from that.”

Neither Miller nor Liu, they admit, had read any of Conan Doyle’s work before signing on for the roles. “My parents are Chinese immigrants, it was not something that I was brought up with,” says New York native Liu, who found fame playing the ferocious lawyer Ling Woo in Ally McBeal, before becoming one of Charlie’s Angels. “But it is so involved and clever, I was really shocked to be so engaged and so sucked in.”

Miller agrees: “You tend to think about them as old writing and old stories but actually, they are very vivid. There is so much information there and so many parallels you can use for a modern interpretation, while still being quite true to the books in essence.”

However, that is not to say that Miller did not have reservations. “I was a little reticent. I was aware that there are a few Sherlocks around, currently,” he says, diplomatically. Not least of these, of course, is his friend and co-star in last year’s Danny Boyle-directed Frankenstein at the National Theatre, Benedict Cumberbatch. The star of the BBC’s much-lauded Sherlock, sparked a row when he recently told a British magazine he’d have preferred Miller to pass on the project.

“I’m a bit cynical about why they’ve chosen to do it and why they cast him,” Cumberbatch was reported as saying, although he later issued a statement saying that he’d been misquoted in a passage which suggested he had told Miller personally he would prefer him not to take the role.

Miller refuses to be drawn into any rivalry though. “People have made many Robin Hood movies; people have made many Batman movies, many different Spiderman movies. Is there room on planet Earth for another Sherlock Holmes? Yes, I think there probably is,” he says, simply. “People have their favourite versions of things – you can’t expect to be everyone’s favourite. We just make the best show we can.”

Doherty certainly has faith in his leading man. “I look at Jonny and I think, this is someone who was supposed to play Sherlock Holmes at some point over the course of his career,” he says.

Miller certainly already had the requisite body art.

“I don’t really have many regrets in my life, but some of my choices in the Nineties have made for some rather time-consuming make-up calls,” he says, ruefully.

“But, for this, it fits, and it’s a parallel that I share with this version of Sherlock.”